with love to indore

Friday, August 28, 2009

Mystery of treasure island

Truth is stranger than fiction

this applies so aptly to treasure island.Today it is a must visit place for anyone coming to Indore. It has provided Indore with something which can give competition to best malls in country (considering size of Indore) and has provided with a socialising platform.

But as it has come out now, it was made by flouting many norms. Apparently the ares was a residential area in earleir master plan. Now it is a different issue that Master Plans are made by people seating in Bhopal with little or no expertise in town planning or urban landscape is a different matter. Today the whole road is lined with commercial establishments and it won't be wrong to call it CBD i.e. commercial business district of Indore but I still remember times when it was site of palatial house of owner family (i.e. Kalanis). After emerging from Kanchanbag lane, till reagal talkies this side of road was a pleasant break for us cycle trotting students as traffic was less, road wide and lined with trees.

That fun is gone for sure , but still I do not think this mall has created any traffic bottlenecks. Rather various such obscenities coming on AB road have certainly created traffic bottlenecks but once again this is not the point.

Point is during congress rule a convenient JV was formed with a government corporation to make mall ( ever heard of government making mall ??? , it can happen only in Indore) and so land use was converted from residential to commercial and once change was effected JV was conveniently thrown out of window .

later IMC chose a very convenient place for the mall owners to make first foot over bridge of Indore but once again i.e. not he point.

point is

1. Why government departments should be given leeway in rules?2. why residents of an area are not considered while making such decision. e.g. city mall at RNT road has made lives of people miserable there.3. Why government was sleeping for so many years?4. Can it be regularsied by imposing a hefty penalty?5. Even if this technical point is sorted out, security wise building seems unsafe on first look. I do not know if Fire brigade will be able to handle any large scale fire on upper floors of this building.6. Things for which this fellow is bieng punished , are they being followed in case of other people? if not then it is a case of political vendetta.7. worse of all , this all could be an eye wash attempt to extract money from industrialist and score brownie points over congress in some deal of you scratch my back , I scratch your back (remember bhumika educational society or land mafia ?)because no responsible person has come in open about details of what investigations are gong against the mall and what has been result of raids till date, what is tax evasion and who has been held accountable or same.

only down line is this mall was made by someone who was educated at good school (stanford MBA) , a rare thing for Indore gentry and used all his parental wealth and education in a work which surely would have make them proud but rigidity of laws or incompetence of our officers, even such path breaking projects are treated like any run of mill project.

@Sharadyou are quite right.I visit Indore sporadically now a days and whenever I went to TI I did not find traffi disturbed too much, not in a way it gets in front of Forum in Bangalore or in orbit in mumbai.and moreover problem is due to wrong parking by vvips and other self proclaimed important people